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Chosen  peoples 


I 


CHOSEN  PEOPLES 

P 

Being  The  First  “Arthur  Davis  Memorial  Lecture” 
delivered  before  the  Jewish  Historical  Society 
at  University  College  on  Easter- 
Passover  Sunday, 

oo7o 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

KBW  YORK  •  BOSTON  •  CHICAGO  -  DALLAS 
ATLANTA  *  SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Lm 

TORONTO 


CHOSEN  PEOPLES: 


THE  HEBRAIC  IDEAL 
VERSUS  THE  TEUTONIC 


ISRAEL 


Author  of  “The  Principles  of  Nationalities,*’  etc.,  etc. 


WITH  A  FOREWORD  BY  THE 


RIGHT  HON.  HERBERT  SAMUEL,  M.A.,  M.P. 

AND  AN  AFTERWORD  BY 
DR.  ISRAEL  ABRAHAMS,  M.A. 

Reader  in  Talmudic  and  Rabbinic  Literature  in  the 
University  of  Cambridge 


J!3eto  gotfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1919 


All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1919 

By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.  Published  March,  1919. 


MRS.  REDCLIFFE  N.  SALAMAN 

THIS  LITTLE  BOOK  IN  HER 
FATHER’S  MEMORY 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2018  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/chosenpeoplestheOOzang 


NOTE 


THE  Arthur  Davis  Memorial  Lec¬ 
ture  was  founded  in  1917,  under  the 
auspices  of  the  Jewish  Historical  Society 
of  England,  by  his  collaborators  in  the 
translation  of  “The  Service  of  the  Syna¬ 
gogue,”  with  the  object  of  fostering  He¬ 
braic  thought  and  learning  in  honour  of  an 
unworldly  scholar.  The  Lecture  is  to  be 
given  annually  in  the  anniversary  week  of 
his  death,  and  the  lectureship  is  to  be  open 
to  men  or  women  of  any  race  or  creed,  who 
are  to  have  absolute  liberty  in  the  treat¬ 
ment  of  their  subject. 


FOREWORD 


Mr.  Arthur  Davis,  in  whose  memory  has 
been  founded  the  series  of  Lectures  de¬ 
voted  to  the  fostering  of  Hebraic  thought 
and  learning,  of  which  this  is  the  first,  was 
born  in  1846  and  died  on  the  first  day  of 
Passover,  1906.  His  childhood  was  spent 
in  the  town  of  Derby,  where  there  was 
then  no  Synagogue  or  J ewish  minister  or 
teacher  of  Hebrew.  Spontaneously  he 
developed  a  strong  Jewish  consciousness, 
and  an  enthusiasm  for  the  Hebrew  lan¬ 
guage,  which  led  him  to  become  one  of  its 
greatest  scholars  in  this,  or  any  other, 
country. 

He  was  able  to  put  his  learning  to  good 


9 


10  Foreword 

use.  He  observed  the  wise  maxim  of 
Leonardo  da  Vinci,  “Avoid  studies  of 
which  the  result  dies  with  the  worker.” 
He  was  not  one  of  those  learned  men,  of 
whom  there  are  many  examples — a  recent 
and  conspicuous  instance  was  the  late 
Lord  Acton — whose  minds  are  so  choked 
with  the  accumulations  of  the  knowledge 
they  have  absorbed  that  they  can  produce 
little  or  nothing.  His  output,  though  not 
prolific,  was  substantial.  In  middle  life 
he  wrote  a  volume  on  “The  Hebrew  Ac¬ 
cents  of  the  Twenty-one  Books  of  the 
Bible,”  which  has  become  a  classical  au¬ 
thority  on  that  somewhat  recondite  sub¬ 
ject.  It  was  he  who  originated  and 
planned  the  new  edition  of  the  Festival 
Prayer  Book  in  six  volumes,  and  he  wrote 
most  of  the  prose  translations.  When  he 


Foreword 


11 


died,  though  only  two  volumes  out  of  the 
six  had  been  published,  he  left  the  whole 
of  the  text  complete.  To  Mr.  Herbert 
M.  Adler,  who  had  been  his  collaborator 
from  the  beginning,  fell  the  finishing  of 
the  great  editorial  task. 

Not  least  of  his  services  lay  in  the  fact 
that  he  had  transmitted  much  of  his  knowl¬ 
edge  to  his  two  daughters,  who  have 
worthily  continued  his  tradition  of  He¬ 
brew  scholarship  and  culture. 

Arthur  Davis’s  life  work,  then,  was  that 
of  a  student  and  interpreter  of  Hebrew. 
It  is  a  profoundly  interesting  fact  that,  in 
our  age,  movements  have  been  set  on  foot 
in  more  than  one  direction  for  the  revival  of 
languages  which  were  dead  or  dying.  We 
see  before  our  eyes  Welsh  and  Irish  in 
process  of  being  saved  from  extinction, 


12 


Foreword 


with  the  hope  perhaps  of  restoring  their 
ancient  glories  in  poetry  and  prose.  Such 
movements  show  that  our  time  is  not  so 
utilitarian  and  materialistic  as  is  often  sup¬ 
posed.  A  similar  revivifying  process  is 
affecting  Hebrew.  For  centuries  it  has 
been  preserved  as  a  ritual  language,  shel¬ 
tered  within  the  walls  of  the  Synagogue; 
often  not  fully  understood,  and  never 
spoken,  by  the  members  of  the  congrega¬ 
tions.  Now  it  is  becoming  in  Palestine 
once  more  a  living  and  spoken  language. 

Hebrew  is  one  example  among  many 
of  a  language  outliving  for  purposes  of 
ritual  its  use  in  ordinary  speech.  A  ritual 
is  regarded  as  a  sacred  thing,  unchanging, 
and  usually  unchangeable,  except  as  the 
result  of  some  great  religious  upheaval. 
The  language  in  which  it  is  framed  con- 


Foreword 


13 


tinues  fixed,  amid  the  slowly  developing 
conditions  of  the  workaday  world.  Often, 
indeed,  the  use  of  an  ancient  language, 
which  has  gradually  fallen  into  disuse 
among  the  people,  is  deliberately  main¬ 
tained  for  the  air  of  mystery  and  of  awe 
which  is  conveyed  by  its  use,  and  which 
has  something  of  the  same  effect  upon  the 
intellect  as  the  “dim  religious  light”  of  a 
cathedral  has  upon  the  emotions.  Fur¬ 
ther,  it  reserves  to  the  priesthood  a  kind 
of  esoteric  knowledge,  which  gives  them 
an  additional  authority  that  they  would 
desire  to  maintain.  So  we  find  that  in 
the  days  of  Marcus  Aurelius  an  ancient 
Salian  liturgy  was  used  in  the  Roman 
temples  which  had  become  almost  unin¬ 
telligible  to  the  worshippers.  The  ritual 
of  the  religion  of  Isis  in  Greece  was,  at 


14 


Foreword 


the  same  period,  conducted  in  an  unknown 
tongue.  In  the  present  age  Church 
Slavonic,  the  ecclesiastical  language  of  the 
orthodox  Slavs,  is  only  just  intelligible  to 
the  peasantry  of  Russia  and  the  neigh¬ 
bouring  Slav  countries.  The  Buddhists 
of  China  conduct  their  services  in  Sanscrit, 
which  neither  the  monks  nor  the  people  un¬ 
derstand,  and  the  services  of  the  Buddhists 
in  Japan  are  either  in  Sanscrit  or  in  an¬ 
cient  Chinese.  I  believe  it  is  a  fact  that 
in  Abyssinia,  again,  the  liturgy  is  in  a  lan¬ 
guage  called  Geez,  which  is  no  longer  in 
use  as  a  living  tongue  and  is  not  under¬ 
stood. 

But  we  need  not  go  to  earlier  centuries 
or  to  distant  countries  for  examples.  In 
any  Roman  Catholic  church  in  London  to¬ 
day  you  will  find  the  service  conducted  in 


Foreword 


15 


a  language  which,  if  understood  at  all  by 
the  general  body  of  the  congregation,  has 
been  learnt  by  them  only  for  the  purposes 
of  the  liturgy. 

Of  all  these  ritual  languages  which  have 
outlived  their  current  use  and  have  been 
preserved  for  religious  purposes  alone, 
Hebrew  is,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  the  only 
one  which  has  ever  showed  signs  of  re¬ 
newing  its  old  vitality — like  the  roses  of 
Jericho  which  appear  to  be  dead  and 
shrivelled  hut  which,  when  placed  in 
water,  recover  their  vitality  and  their 
bloom.  We  may  join  in  hoping  that 
again  in  Palestine  Hebrew  may  recover 
something  of  its  old  supremacy  in  the 
field  of  morals  and  of  intellect. 

To  render  this  possible  the  work  of 
scholars  such  as  Arthur  Davis  has  con- 


16  Foreword 

tributecL  To  him  this  was  a  labour  of 
love,  and  for  love.  He  would  receive  no 
payment  for  any  of  his  religious  work  or 
writings.  Part  of  the  profits  that  accrued 
from  the  publication  of  his  edition  of  “The 
Services  of  the  Synagogue”  has  been  de¬ 
voted  to  the  formation  of  a  fund  from 
which  will  be  defrayed  the  expenses — after 
the  first — of  a  series  of  annual  lectures 
on  subjects  of  Jewish  interest,  to  be  de¬ 
livered  by  men  of  various  schools  of 
thought.  We  are  fortunate  that  the  ini¬ 
tial  lecture  is  to  be  delivered  to-day  by  the 
most  distinguished  of  living  Jewish  men 
of  letters. 

Arthur  Davis  was  a  man  of  much  eleva¬ 
tion  and  charm  of  character.  He  took  an 
active  part  in  the  work  of  communal,  and 
particularly  educational,  organizations. 


Foreword  17 

He  was  one  of  those  men — not  rare  among 
Jews,  though  the  rest  of  the  world  does 
not  always  recognize  it — who  are  philan¬ 
thropic  in  spirit,  practical  in  action,  mod¬ 
est,  self-sacrificing,  devoted  to  a  fine 
family  life,  having  in  them  much  of  the 
student  and  something  even  of  the  saint. 
It  is  fitting  that  his  memory  should  be  kept 
alive. 

Herbert  Samuel. 


CHOSEN  PEOPLES 


CHOSEN  PEOPLES 


i 

THE  claim  that  the  Jews  are  a 
“Chosen  People”  has  always  irri¬ 
tated  the  Gentiles.  “From  olden  times, 
wrote  Philostratus  in  the  third  century, 
“the  Jews  have  been  opposed  not  only  to 
Rome  but  to  the  rest  of  humanity. 
Even  Julian  the  Apostate,  who  designed 
to  rebuild  their  Temple,  raged  at  the  doc¬ 
trine  of  their  election.  Sinai,  said  the 
Rabbis  with  a  characteristic  pun,  has 

evoked  Sinah  (hatred) . 

In  our  own  day,  the  distinguished  ethi¬ 
cal  teacher,  Dr.  Stanton  Coit,  complains, 

21 


22  Chosen  Peoples 

like  Houston  Chamberlain,  that  our  Bible 
has  checked  and  blighted  all  other  na¬ 
tional  inspiration:  in  his  book  “The  Soul 
of  America,”  he  even  calls  upon  me  to 
repudiate  unequivocally  “the  claim  to 
spiritual  supremacy  over  all  the  peoples 
of  the  world.” 

The  recent  revelation  of  racial  arro¬ 
gance  in  Germany  has  provided  our  ene¬ 
mies  with  a  new  weapon.  “Germanism 
is  Judaism,”  says  a  writer  in  the  Ameri¬ 
can  Bookman.  The  proposition  contains 
just  that  dash  of  truth  which  is  more  dan¬ 
gerous  than  falsehood  undiluted;  and  the 
saying  ascribed  to  Von  Tirpitz  in  1915 
that  the  Kaiser  spent  all  his  time  praying 
and  studying  Hebrew  may  serve  to  give 
it  colour.  “As  he  talks  to-day  at  Pots¬ 
dam  and  Berlin,”  says  Verhaeren,  in  his 


Chosen  Peoples  23 

book  “Belgium’s  Agony,”  “the  Kings  of 
Israel  and  their  prophets  talked  six  thou¬ 
sand  years  ago  at  Jerusalem.”  The 
chronology  is  characteristic  of  anti-Sem¬ 
itic  looseness :  six  thousand  years  ago  the 
world  by  Hebrew  reckoning  had  not  been 
created,  and  at  any  rate  the  then  Kings 
of  Jerusalem  were  not  Jewish.  But  it 
is  undeniable  that  Germanism,  like  J uda- 
ism,  has  evolved  a  doctrine  of  special  elec¬ 
tion.  Spiritual  in  the  teaching  of  Fichte 
and  Treitschke,  the  doctrine  became  gross 
and  narrow  in  the  Deutsche  Religion  of 
Friedrich  Lange.  “The  German  people 
is  the  elect  of  God  and  its  enemies  are 
the  enemies  of  the  Lord.”  And  this  Ger¬ 
man  God,  like  the  popular  idea  of  Jeho¬ 
vah,  is  a  “Man  of  War”  who  demands 
“eye  for  eye,  tooth  for  tooth,”  and  cries 
with  savage  sublimity: — 


24  Chosen  Peoples 

I  will  render  vengeance  to  Mine  adversaries, 
And  will  recompense  them  that  hate  Me, 

I  will  make  Mine  arrows  drunk  with  blood, 
And  my  sword  shall  devour  flesh. 

Judaism  has  even  its  Song  of  Hate,  ac¬ 
companied  on  the  timbrel  by  Miriam. 
The  treatment  of  the  Amalekites  and 
other  Palestine  tribes  is  a  byword.  “We 
utterly  destroyed  every  city,”  Deuteron¬ 
omy  declares;  “the  men  and  the  women 
and  the  little  ones ;  we  left  none  remaining ; 
only  the  cattle  we  took  for  a  prey  unto 
ourselves  with  the  spoil  of  the  cities.” 
David,  who  is  promised  of  God  that  his 
seed  shall  be  enthroned  for  ever,  slew  sur¬ 
rendered  Moabites  in  cold  blood,  and 
J udas  Maccabasus,  the  other  warrior  hero 
of  the  race,  when  the  neutral  city  of  Eph- 
ron  refused  his  army  passage,  took  the 
city,  slew  every  male  in  it,  and  passed 


Chosen  Peoples  25 

across  its  burning  ruins  and  bleeding 
bodies.  The  prophet  Isaiah  pictures  the 
wealth  of  nations — the  phrase  is  his,  not 
Adam  Smith’s — streaming  to  Zion  by 
argosy  and  caravan.  “For  that  nation 
and  kingdom  that  will  not  serve  thee  shall 
perish.  .  .  .  Aliens  shall  build  up  thy 
walls,  and  their  kings  shall  minister  unto 
thee.  Thou  shalt  suck  the  milk  of  na¬ 
tions.”  “The  Lord  said  unto  me,”  says 
the  second  Psalm,  “Thou  art  My  son,  this 
day  have  I  begotten  thee.  Ask  of  Me 
and  I  will  give  the  nations  for  thine  inher¬ 
itance.  .  .  .  Thou  shal+  break  them  with 
a  rod  of  iron.” 

Nor  are  such  ideas  discarded  by  the 
synagogue  of  to-day.  Every  Saturday 
night  the  orthodox  Jew  repeats  the  prayer 
for  material  prosperity  and  the  promise  of 


26  Chosen  Peoples 

ultimate  glory:  “Thou  shalt  lend  unto 
many  nations  but  thou  shalt  not  borrow; 
and  thou  shalt  rule  over  many  nations  but 
they  shall  not  rule  over  thee.”  “Our 
Father,  our  King,”  he  prays  at  the  New 
Year,  “avenge  before  our  eyes  the  blood  of 
Thy  servants  that  has  been  spilt.”  And 
at  the  Passover  Seder  Service  he  still  re¬ 
peats  the  Psalmist’s  appeal  to  God  to  pour 
out  His  wrath  on  the  heathen  who  have 
consumed  Jacob  and  laid  waste  his  dwell¬ 
ing.  “Pursue  them  in  anger  and  destroy 
them  from  under  the  heavens  of  the 


Lord!” 


II 


MUCH  might,  of  course,  be  adduced 
to  mitigate  the  seeming  ferocity  or 
egotism  of  these  passages.  It  would  be 
indeed  strange  if  Prussia,  which  Napoleon 
wittily  described  as  “hatched  from  a  can¬ 
non-ball,”  should  be  found  really  resem¬ 
bling  J udaea,  whose  national  greeting  was 
“Peace”;  whose  prophet  Ezekiel  pro¬ 
claimed  in  words  of  flame  and  thunder 
God’s  judgment  upon  the  great  military 
empires  of  antiquity ;  whose  mediaeval  poet 
Kalir  has  left  in  our  New  Year  liturgy 
what  might  be  almost  a  contemporary  pic¬ 
ture  of  a  brazen  autocracy  “that  planned 

in  secret,  performed  in  daring.”  And,  as 

27 


28  Chosen  Peoples 

a  matter  of  tact,  some  of  these  passages 
are  torn  from  their  context.  The  pictures 
of  Messianic  prosperity,  for  example,  are 
invariably  set  in  an  ethical  framework: 
the  all-dominant  Israel  is  also  to  be 
all-righteous.  The  blood  that  is  to  be 
avenged  is  the  blood  of  martyrs  “who  went 
through  fire  and  water  for  the  sanctifica¬ 
tion  of  Thy  name.” 

But  let  us  take  these  passages  at  their 
nakedest.  Let  us  ignore — as  completely 
as  Jesus  did — that  the  legal  penalty  of 
“eye  for  eye”  had  been  commuted  into  a 
money  penalty  by  the  great  majority  of 
early  Pharisaic  lawyers.  Is  not  that  very 
maxim  to-day  the  clamoured  policy  of 
Christian  multitudes?  “Destroy  them 
from  under  the  heavens  of  the  Lord!” 
When  this  is  the  imprecation  of  a  V ehaeren 


Chosen  Peoples  29 

or  a  Maeterlinck  over  Belgium  and  not  of 
a  mediaeval  Jew  over  the  desolated  home  of 
J acob,  is  it  not  felt  as  a  righteous  cry  of  the 
heart?  Nay,  only  the  other  Sunday  an 
Englishwoman  in  a  country  drawing-room 
assured  me  she  would  like  to  kill  every 
German — man  or  woman — with  her  own 
hand! 

And  here  we  see  the  absurdity  of  judg¬ 
ing  the  Bible  outside  its  historic  conditions, 
or  by  standards  not  comparative.  Said 
James  Hinton,  “The  Bible  needs  inter¬ 
preting  by  Nature  even  as  Nature  by  it.” 
And  it  is  by  this  canon  that  we  must  in¬ 
terpret  the  concept  of  a  Chosen  People, 
and  so  much  else  in  our  Scriptures.  It  is 
Life  alone  that  can  give  us  the  clue  to  the 
Bible.  This  is  the  only  “Guide  to  the 
Perplexed,”  and  Maimonides  but  made 


30  Chosen  Peoples 

confusion  worse  confounded  when  by  alle¬ 
gations  of  allegory  and  other  devices  of 
the  apologist  he  laboured  to  reconcile  the 
Bible  with  Aristotle.  Equally  futile  was 
the  effort  of  Manasseh  ben  Israel  to  recon¬ 
cile  it  with  itself.  The  Baraitha  of  Rabbi 
Ishmael  that  when  two  texts  are  discrep¬ 
ant  a  third  text  must  be  found  to  reconcile 
them  is  but  a  temptation  to  that  distorted 
dialectic  known  as  Pilpul.  The  only  true 
“Conciliador”  is  history,  the  only  real  rec¬ 
onciler  human  nature.  An  allegorizing 
rationalism  like  Rambam’s  leads  nowhere 
— or  rather  everywhere.  The  same 
method  that  softened  the  Oriental  amor¬ 
ousness  of  “The  Song  of  Solomon  into 
an  allegory  of  God’s  love  for  Israel  be¬ 
came,  in  the  hands  of  Christianity,  an  al¬ 
legory  of  Christ’s  love  for  His  Church. 


Chosen  Peoples  31 

But  if  Reason  cannot  always — as  Bachya 
imagined — confir'm  tradition,  it  can  ex¬ 
plain  it  historically.  It  can  disentangle 
the  lower  strands  from  the  higher  in  that 
motley  collection  of  national  literature 
which,  extending  over  many  generations 
of  authorship,  streaked  with  strayed  frag¬ 
ments  of  Aramaic,  varying  from  the  idyll 
of  Ruth  to  the  apocalyptic  dreams  of 
Daniel,  and  deprived  by  Job  and  Ecclesi¬ 
astes  of  even  a  rambling  epical  unity,  is 
naturally  obnoxious  to  criticism  when  put 
forward  as  one  uniform  Book,  still  more 
when  put  forward  as  uniformly  divine. 
For  my  part  I  am  more  lost  in  wonder 
over  the  people  that  produced  and  pre¬ 
served  and  the  Synagogue  that  selected 
and  canonized  so  marvellous  a  literature, 
than  dismayed  because  occasionally  amid 


32  Chosen  Peoples 

the  organ-music  of  its  Miltons  and  Words 
worths  there  is  heard  the  primeval  saga 
note  of  heroic  savagery. 


Ill 


AS  Joseph  Jacobs  reminded  us  in  his 
“Biblical  Archaeology”  and  as  Sir 
James  Frazer  is  just  illustrating  afresh, 
the  whole  of  Hebrew  ritual  is  permeated 
by  savage  survivals,  a  fact  recognized  by 
Maimonides  himself  when  he  declared  that 
Moses  adapted  idolatrous  practices  to  a 
purer  worship.  Israel  was  environed  by 
barbarous  practices  and  gradually  rose  be¬ 
yond  them.  And  it  was  the  same  with 
concepts  as  with  practices.  Judaism, 
which  added  to  the  Bible  the  fruits  of  cen¬ 
turies  of  spiritual  evolution  in  the  shape  of 
the  Talmud,  has  passed  utterly  beyond  the 
more  primitive  stages  of  the  Old  Testa- 


33 


34  Chosen  Peoples 

ment,  even  as  it  has  replaced  polygamy  by 
monogamy.  That  Song  of  Hate  at  the 
Red  Sea  was  wiped  out,  for  example,  by 
the  oft-quoted  Midrash  in  which  God  re¬ 
bukes  the  angels  who  wished  to  join  in  the 
song.  “How  can  ye  sing  when  My  crea¬ 
tures  are  perishing  ?”  The  very  miracles 
of  the  Old  Testament  were  side-tracked 
by  the  Rabbinic  exposition  that  they  were 
merely  special  creations  antecedent  to  that 
unchangeable  system  of  nature  which  went 
its  course,  however  fools  suffered.  Our 
daily  bread,  said  the  sages,  is  as  miraculous 
as  the  division  of  the  Red  Sea.  And  the 
dry  retort  of  the  soberest  of  Pharisaic 
Rabbis,  when  a  voice  from  heaven  inter¬ 
fered  with  the  voting  on  a  legal  point, 
en  mashgichin  he-bathhol — “We  cannot 
have  regard  to  the  Bath  Kol,  the  Torah 


Chosen  Peoples  35 

is  for  earth,  not  heaven” — was  a  sign  that, 
for  one  school  of  thought  at  least,  reason 
and  the  democratic  principle  were  not  to 
be  browbeaten,  and  that  the  era  of  miracles 
in  Judaism  was  over.  The  very  incoher¬ 
ence  of  the  Talmud,  its  confusion  of  voices, 
is  an  index  of  free  thinking.  Post -bib¬ 
lical  Israel  has  had  a  veritable  galaxy  of 
thinkers  and  saints,  from  Maimonides  its 
Aquinas  to  Crescas  its  Duns  Scotus,  from 
Mendelssohn  its  Erasmus  to  the  Baal- 
Shem  its  St.  Francis.  But  it  has  been  at 
once  the  weakness  and  the  strength  of 
orthodox  Judaism  never  to  have  made  a 
breach  with  its  past;  possibly  out  of  too 
great  a  reverence  for  history,  possibly  out 
of  over-consideration  for  the  masses,  whose 
mentality  would  in  any  case  have  trans¬ 
formed  the  new  back  again  to  the  old. 


36  Chosen  Peoples 

Thus  it  has  carried  its  whole  lumber  pi¬ 
ously  forward,  even  as  the  human  body  is, 
according  to  evolutionists,  “a  veritable 
museum  of  relics,”  or  as  whales  have  ves¬ 
tiges  of  hind  legs  with  now  immovable 
muscles.  Already  in  the  Persian  period 
Judaism  had  begun  to  evolve  “the  service 
of  the  Synagogue,”  but  it  did  not  shed  the 
animal  sacrifices,  and  even  when  these 
were  abruptly  ended  by  the  destruction  of 
the  Temple,  and  Jochanan  ben  Z accai 
must  needs  substitute  prayer  and  charity, 
Judaism  still  preserved  through  the  ages 
the  nominal  hope  of  their  restoration.  So 
that  even  were  the  Jehovah  of  the  Old 
Testament  the  fee-fi-fo-fum  ogre  of  pop¬ 
ular  imagination,  that  tyrant  of  the 
heavens  whose  unfairness  in  choosing 
Israel  was  only  equalled  by  its  bad  taste, 


Chosen  Peoples  37 

it  would  not  follow  that  J udaism  had  not 
silently  replaced  him  by  a  nobler  Deity 
centuries  ago.  The  truth  is,  however,  that 
it  is  precisely  in  the  Old  Testament  that 
is  reached  the  highest  ethical  note  ever  yet 
sounded,  not  only  by  J  udaism  but  by  man, 
and  that  this  mass  of  literature  is  so  satu¬ 
rated  with  the  conception  of  a  people 
chosen  not  for  its  own  but  for  universal 
salvation,  that  the  more  material  prophe¬ 
cies — evoked  moreover  in  the  bitterness  of 
exile,  as  Belgian  poets  are  now  moved  to 
foretell  restoration  and  glory — are  prac¬ 
tically  swamped.  At  the  worst,  we  may 
say  there  are  two  conflicting  currents  of 
thought,  as  there  are  in  the  bosom  of  every 
nation,  one  primarily  self-regarding,  and 
the  other  setting  towards  the  larger  life  of 
humanity.  It  may  help  us  to  understand 


38  Chosen  Peoples 

the  paradox  of  the  junction  of  Israel’s 
glory  with  God’s,  if  we  remember  that  the 
most  inspired  of  mortals,  those  whose  life 
is  consecrated  to  an  art,  a  social  reform,  a 
political  redemption,  are  rarely  able  to 
separate  the  success  of  their  mission  from 
their  own  individual  success  or  at  least  in¬ 
dividual  importance.  Even  Jesus  looked 
forward  to  his  twelve  legions  of  angels  and 
his  seat  at  the  right  hand  of  Power.  But 
in  no  other  nation  known  to  history  has 
the  balance  of  motives  been  cast  so  over¬ 
whelmingly  on  the  side  of  idealism.  An 
episode  related  by  Josephus  touching 
Pontius  Pilate  serves  to  illuminate  the 
more  famous  episode  in  which  he  figures. 
When  he  brought  the  Homan  ensigns  with 
Caesar’s  effigies  to  Jerusalem,  the  Jews  so 
wearied  him  with  their  petitions  to  remove 


Chosen  Peoples  39 

this  defiling  deification  that  at  last  he  sur¬ 
rounded  the  petitioners  with  soldiers  and 
menaced  them  with  immediate  death  un¬ 
less  they  ceased  to  pester  and  went  home. 
“But  they  threw  themselves  upon  the 
ground  and  laid  their  necks  bare  and  said 
they  would  take  their  deaths  very  willingly 
rather  than  the  wisdom  of  their  laws 
should  be  transgressed.”  And  Pilate, 
touched,  removed  the  effigies.  Such  a  story 
explains  at  once  how  the  J ews  could  pro¬ 
duce  Jesus  and  why  they  could  not  wor¬ 
ship  him. 

“God’s  witnesses,”  “a  light  of  the  na¬ 
tions,”  “a  suffering  servant,”  “a  kingdom 
of  priests”— the  old  Testament  metaphors 
for  Israel’s  mission  are  as  numerous  as 
they  are  noble.  And  the  lyrics  in  which 
they  occur  are  unparalleled  in  literature 


40  Chosen  Peoples 

for  their  fusion  of  ethical  passion  with 
poetical  beauty.  Take,  for  example,  the 
forty-second  chapter  of  Isaiah.  ( I  quote 
as  in  gratitude  bound  the  accurate  Jewish 
version  of  the  Bible  we  owe  to  America.) 

Behold  My  servant  whom  I  uphold ; 

Mine  elect  in  whom  My  soul  delighteth; 

I  have  put  My  spirit  upon  him, 

He  shall  make  the  right  to  go  forth  to  the  na¬ 
tions  : 

He  shall  not  fail  or  be  crushed 

Till  he  have  set  the  right  on  the  earth, 

And  the  isles  shall  wait  for  his  teaching. 

Thus  saith  God  the  LORD, 

He  that  created  the  heavens,  and  stretched  them 
forth, 

He  that  spread  forth  the  earth  and  that  which 
cometh  out  of  it, 

He  that  giveth  bread  unto  the  people  upon  it, 
And  spirit  to  them  that  walk  therein: 

I  the  LORD  have  called  thee  in  righteousness, 
And  have  taken  hold  of  thy  hand, 

And  kept  thee,  and  set  thee  for  a  covenant  of 
the  people, 


Chosen  Peoples 


41 


For  a  light  of  the  nations ; 

To  open  the  blind  eyes, 

To  bring  out  the  prisoners  from  the  dungeon, 
And  them  that  sit  in  darkness  out  of  the  prison- 
house. 

Never  was  ideal  less  tribal:  it  is  still  the 
dynamic  impulse  of  all  civilization.  “Let 
justice  well  up  as  waters  and  righteous¬ 
ness  as  a  mighty  stream.”  “Nation  shall 
not  lift  sword  against  nation,  neither  shall 
there  be  war  any  more.” 

Nor  does  this  mission  march  always 
with  the  pageantry  of  external  triumph. 
“Despised  and  forsaken  of  men,”  Isaiah 
paints  Israel.  “Yet  he  bore  the  sin  of 
many.  And  made  intercession  for  the 
transgressors  .  .  .  with  his  stripes  we 
were  healed.” 

Happily  all  that  is  best  in  Christendom 
recognizes,  with  Kuenen  or  Matthew  Ar- 


42  Chosen  Peoples 

nold,  the  grandeur  of  the  Old  Testament 
ideal.  But  that  this  ideal  penetrated 
equally  to  our  everyday  liturgy  is  less  un¬ 
derstood  of  the  world.  “Blessed  art 
Thou,  O  Lord  our  God,  who  base  chosen 
Israel  from  all  peoples  and  given  him  the 
Law.”  Here  is  no  choice  of  a  favourite 
but  of  a  servant,  and  when  it  is  added  that 
“from  Zion  shall  the  Law  go  forth”  it  is 
obvious  what  that  servant’s  task  is  to  be. 
“What  everlasting  love  hast  Thou  loved 
the  house  of  Israel,”  says  the  Evening 
Prayer.  But  in  what  does  this  love  con¬ 
sist?  Is  it  that  we  have  been  pampered, 
cosseted?  The  contrary.  “A  Law,  and 
commandments,  statutes  and  judgments 
hast  Thou  taught  us.”  Before  these  were 
thundered  from  Sinai,  the  historian  of  the 
Exodus  records,  Israel  was  explicitly  in- 


Chosen  Peoples  43 

formed  that  only  by  obedience  to  them 
could  he  enjoy  peculiar  favour.  “Now 
therefore,  if  ye  will  hearken  unto  My  voice 
indeed,  and  keep  My  covenant,  then  ye 
shall  be  Mine  own  treasure  from  among 
all  peoples;  for  all  the  earth  is  Mine;  and 
ye  shall  be  unto  Me  a  kingdom  of  priests, 
and  a  holy  nation.”  A  chosen  people  is 
really  a  choosing  people.  Not  idly  does 
Talmudical  legend  assert  that  the  Law 
was  offered  first  to  all  other  nations  and 
only  Israel  accepted  the  yoke. 

How  far  the  discipline  of  the  Law  ac¬ 
tually  produced  the  Chosen  People  postu¬ 
lated  in  its  conferment  is  a  subtle  question 
for  pragmatists.  Mr.  Lucien  Wolf  once 
urged  that  “the  yoke  of  the  Torah”  had 
fashioned  a  racial  aristocracy  possessing 
marked  biological  advantages  over  aver- 


44  Chosen  Peoples 

age  humanity,  as  well  as  sociological 
superiorities  of  temperance  and  family 
life.  And  indeed  the  statistics  of  Jewish 
vitality  and  brain-power,  and  even  of 
artistic  faculty,  are  amazing  enough  to 
invite  investigation  from  all  eugenists, 
biologists,  and  statesmen.  But  whether 
this  general  superiority — a  superiority  not 
inconsistent  with  grave  failings  and  draw¬ 
backs — is  due  to  the  rigorous  selection  of 
a  tragic  history,  or  whether  it  is,  as  Ana- 
tole  Leroy-Beaulieu  maintains,  the  herit¬ 
age  of  a  civilization  older  by  thousands  of 
years  than  that  of  Europe;  whether  the 
Torah  made  the  greatness  of  the  people, 
or  the  people — precisely  because  of  its 
greatness — made  the  Torah;  whether  we 
have  a  case  of  natural  election  or  artificial 
election  to  study,  it  is  not  in  any  self-suf- 


Chosen  Peoples  45 

ficient  superiority  or  aim  thereat  that  the 
essence  of  Judaism  lies,  but  in  an  apostolic 
altruism.  The  old  Hebrew  writers  in¬ 
deed — when  one  considers  the  impress  the 
Bible  was  destined  to  make  on  the  faith, 
art,  and  imagination  of  the  world — might 
well  be  credited  with  the  intuition  of 
genius  in  attributing  to  their  people  a 
quality  of  election.  And  the  Jews  of  to¬ 
day  in  attributing  to  themselves  that 
quality  would  have  the  ground  not  only 
of  intuition  but  of  history.  Nevertheless 
that  election  is,  even  by  Jewish  orthodoxy, 
conceived  as  designed  solely  for  world- 
service,  for  that  spiritual  mission  for  which 
Israel  when  fashioned  was  exiled  and  scat¬ 
tered  like  wind-borne  seeds,  and  of  the 
consummation  of  which  his  ultimate  re¬ 
patriation  and  glory  will  be  but  the  sym- 


46  Chosen  Peoples 

bol.  It  is  with  Alenu  that  every  service 
ends — the  prayer  for  the  coming  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  “when  Thou  wilt  re¬ 
move  the  abominations  from  the  earth,  and 
the  idols  will  be  utterly  cut  off,  when  the 
world  will  be  perfected  under  the  King¬ 
dom  of  the  Almighty  and  all  the  children 
of  flesh  will  call  upon  Thy  name,  when 
Thou  wilt  turn  unto  Thyself  all  the 
wicked  of  the  earth.  ...  In  that  day  the 
Lord  shall  be  One  and  His  name  One.” 
Israel  disappears  altogether  in  this  diurnal 
aspiration. 


IV 


ISRAEL  disappears,  too,  in  whole 
books  of  the  Old  Testament.  What 
has  the  problem  of  Job,  the  wisdom  of 
Proverbs,  or  the  pessimism  of  Ecclesiastes 
to  do  with  the  Jew  specifically?  The 
Psalter  would  scarcely  have  had  so  uni¬ 
versal  an  appeal  had  it  been  essentially 
rooted  in  a  race. 

In  the  magnificent  cosmic  poem  of 

Psalm  civ — half  Whitman,  half  St. 

Francis — not  only  his  fellow-man  but  all 

creation  comes  under  the  benediction  of 

the  Hebrew  poet’s  mood.  “The  high  hills 

are  for  the  wild  goats;  the  rocks  are  a 

47 


48  Chosen  Peoples 

refuge  for  the  conies  .  .  .  The  young 
lions  roar  after  their  prey,  and  seek  their 
food  from  God  .  .  .  man  goeth  forth  unto 
his  work,  and  to  his  labour  until  the  eve¬ 
ning.”  Even  in  a  more  primitive  Hebrew 
poet  the  same  cosmic  universalism  reveals 
itself.  To  the  bard  of  Genesis  the  rain¬ 
bow  betokens  not  merely  a  covenant  be¬ 
tween  God  and  man  but  a  “covenant  be¬ 
tween  God  and  every  living  creature  of  all 
flesh  that  is  upon  the  earth.” 

That  the  myth  of  the  tribalism  of  the 
Jewish  God  should  persist  in  face  of  such 
passages  can  only  be  explained  by  the  fact 
that  He  shares  in  the  unpopularity  of 
His  people.  Mr.  Wells,  for  example,  in 
his  finely  felt  but  intellectually  incoher¬ 
ent  book,  “God  the  Invisible  King,”  dis¬ 
misses  Him  as  a  malignant  and  par- 


Chosen  Peoples  49 

tisan  Deity,”  jealous  and  pettily  stringent. 
At  most  one  is  entitled  to  say  with  Mr. 
Israel  Abrahams  in  his  profound  little 
book  on  “Judaism”  that  “God,  in  the  early 
literature  a  tribal,  non-moral  Deity,  was 
in  the  later  literature  a  righteous  ruler, 
who,  with  Amos  and  Hosea,  loved  and  de¬ 
manded  righteousness  in  man,”  and  that 
there  was  an  expansion  from  a  national  to 
a  universal  Ruler.  But  if  “by  early  litera¬ 
ture”  anybody  understand  simply  Genesis, 
if  he  imagines  that  the  evolutionary  move¬ 
ment  in  Judaism  proceeds  regularly  from 
Abraham  to  Isaiah,  he  is  grossly  in  error. 
No  doubt  all  early  gods  are  tribal,  all  early 
religions  connected  with  the  hearth  and 
ancestor  worship,  but  the  God  of  Isaiah 
is  already  in  Genesis,  and  the  tribal  God 
has  to  be  exhumed  from  practically  all 


50  Chosen  Peoples 

parts  of  the  Bible.  But  even  in  the 
crudities  of  Genesis  or  Judges  that  have 
escaped  editorship  I  cannot  find  Mr. 
Wells’s  “malignant”  Deity — He  is 
really  “the  invisible  King.”  The  very 
first  time  Jehovah  appears  in  His  tribal 
aspect  (Genesis  xii.)  His  promise  to 
bless  Abraham  ends  with  the  assurance — 
and  it  almost  invariably  accompanies  all 
the  repetitions  of  the  promise — “And  in 
thee  shall  all  the  families  of  the  earth  be 
blessed.”  Nay,  as  I  pointed  out  in  my 
essay  on  “The  Gods  of  Germany,”  the 
very  first  words  of  the  Bible,  “In  the  be¬ 
ginning  God  created  the  heaven  and  the 
earth,”  strike  a  magnificent  note  of  uni- 
versalism,  which  is  sustained  in  the  deriva¬ 
tion  of  all  humanity  from  Adam,  and 
again  from  Noah,  with  one  original  lan- 


Chosen  Peoples  51 

guage.  Nor  is  this  a  modern  gloss,  for 
the  Talmud  already  deduces  the  interpre¬ 
tation.  Racine’s  “Esther”  in  the  noble 
lines  lauded  by  Voltaire  might  be  almost 
rebuking  Mr.  Wells: — 

Ce  Dieu,  maitre  absolu  de  la  terre  et  des  cieux, 
N’est  point  tel  que  l’erreur  le  figure  a  vos  yeux : 
L’Eternel  est  son  nom,  le  monde  est  son  ouv- 
rage ; 

II  entend  les  soupirs  de  l’humble  qu’on  outrage, 
Juge  tous  les  mortels  avec  d’egales  lois, 

Et  du  haut  de  son  trone  interroge  les  rois. 

— there  is  the  true  Hebrew  note,  the  note 

denounced  of  Nietzsche. 

Is  this  notorious  “tribal  God”  the  God 

of  the  Mesopotamian  sheikh  whose  seed 

was  so  invidiously  chosen?  Well,  but  of 

«/ 

this  God  Abraham  asks — in  what  I  must 
continue  to  call  the  epochal  sentence  in 
the  Bible — “Shall  not  the  Judge  of  all  the 


52  Chosen  Peoples 

earth  do  right?”  Abraham,  in  fact,  bids 
God  down  as  in  some  divine  Dutch  auc¬ 
tion — Sodom  is  not  to  be  destroyed  if 
it  holds  fifty,  forty-five,  forty,  thirty, 
twenty,  nay  ten  righteous  men.  Com¬ 
pare  this  ethical  development  of  the  an¬ 
cestor  of  J udaism  with  that  of  Pope 
Gregory  XIII,  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
some  thirty-one  centuries  later:  Civitas 
ista  potest  esse  destrui  quando  in  ea  plures 
sunt  hceretici  (“A  city  may  be  destroyed 
when  it  harbours  a  number  of  heretics”). 
And  this  claim  of  man  to  criticize  God 
Jehovah  freely  concedes.  Thus  the  God 
of  Abraham  is  no  God  of  a  tribe,  but,  like 
the  God  of  the  Rabbi  who  protested 
against  the  Bath-Kol,  the  God  of  Reason 
and  Love.  As  clearly  as  for  the  nine¬ 
teenth-century  Martineau,  “the  seat  of 


Chosen  Peoples  53 

authority  in  Religion”  has  passed  to  the 
human  conscience.  God  Himself  appeals 
to  it  in  that  inversion  of  the  Sodom  story, 
the  story  of  Jonah,  whose  teaching  is 
far  greater  and  more  wonderful  than  its 
fish.  And  this  Abrahamic  tradition  of 
free  thought  is  continued  by  Moses,  who 
boldly  comes  between  Jehovah  and  the  peo¬ 
ple  He  designs  to  destroy.  “Wherefore 
should  the  Egyptians  speak,  saying,  For 
evil  did  He  bring  them  forth  to  slay  them 
in  the  mountains  .  .  .?  Turn  from  Thy 
fierce  wrath  and  repent  of  this  evil  against 
Thy  people.”  Moses  goes  on  to  remind 
Him  of  the  covenant,  “And  the  Lord  re¬ 
pented  of  the  evil  which  He  said  He  would 
do  unto  His  people.”  In  the  same  chap¬ 
ter,  the  people  having  made  a  golden  calf, 
Moses  offers  his  life  for  their  sin;  the  Old 


54  Chosen  Peoples 

Testament  here,  as  in  so  many  places,  an¬ 
ticipating  the  so-called  New,  but  rejecting 
the  notion  of  vicarious  atonement  so  dras¬ 
tically  that  the  attempt  of  dogmatic  Chris¬ 
tianity  to  base  itself  on  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  can  only  be  described  as  text-blind. 
And  the  great  answer  of  Jehovah  to 
Moses’s  questioning — “I  AM  THAT  I 
AM” — yields  already  the  profound  meta¬ 
physical  Deity  of  Maimonides,  that  “in¬ 
visible  King”  whom  the  anonymous  New 
Year  liturgist  celebrates  as: 

Highest  divinity, 

Dynast  of  endlessness, 

Timeless  resplendency, 

Worshipped  eternally, 

Lord  of  Infinity  1 

And  the  fact  that  Moses  himself  was 
married  to  an  Egyptian  woman  and  that 


Chosen  Peoples  55 

“a  mixed  multitude”  went  up  with  the  J ews 
out  of  Egypt  shows  that  the  narrow  tribal¬ 
ism  of  Ezra  and  Nehemiah,  with  the  re¬ 
grettable  rejection  of  the  Samaritans,  was 
but  a  temporary  political  necessity;  while 
the  subsequent  admission  into  the  canon 
of  the  book  of  “Ruth,”  with  its  moral  of 
the  descent  of  the  Messiah  himself  from  a 
Moabite  woman,  is  an  index  that  univer- 
salism  was  still  unconquered.  We  have, 
in  fact,  the  recurring  clash  of  centripetal 
and  centrifugal  forces,  and  what  assured 
the  persistence  and  assures  the  ultimate 
triumph  of  the  latter  is  that  the  race  being 
one  with  the  religion  could  not  resist  that 
religion’s  universal  implications.  If  there 
were  only  a  single  God,  and  He  a  God  of 
justice  and  the  world,  how  could  He  be 
confined  to  Israel?  The  Mission  could 


56  Chosen  Peoples 

not  but  come.  The  true  God,  urges  Mr. 
Wells,  has  no  scorn  or  hatred  for  those 
who  seek  Him  through  idols.  That  is 
exactly  what  Ibn  Gabirol  said  in  1050. 
But  those  blind  seekers  needed  guiding. 
Religion,  in  fact,  not  race,  has  always  been 
the  governing  principle  in  Jewish  history. 
“I  do  not  know  the  origin  of  the  term 
Jew,”  says  Dion  Cassius,  born  in  the  sec¬ 
ond  century.  “The  name  is  used,  how¬ 
ever,  to  designate  all  who  observe  the  cus¬ 
toms  of  this  people,  even  though  they  be 
of  different  race.”  Where  indeed  lay  the 
privilege  of  the  Chosen  People  when  the 
Talmud  defined  a  non-idolater  as  a  Jew, 
and  ranked  a  Gentile  learned  in  the  Torah 
as  greater  than  the  High  Priest?  Such 
learned  proselytes  arose  in  Aquila  and 
Theodotion,  each  of  whom  made  a  Greek 


Chosen  Peoples  57 

version  of  the  Bible;  while  the  orthodox 
Jew  hardly  regards  his  Hebrew  text  as 
complete  unless  accompanied  by  the 
Aramaic  version  popularly  ascribed  to  the 
proselyte  Onkelos.  The  disagreeable  ref¬ 
erences  to  proselytes  in  Rabbinic  litera¬ 
ture,  the  difficulties  thrown  in  their  way, 
and  the  grotesque  conception  of  their 
status  towards  their  former  families,  can¬ 
not  counterbalance  the  fact,  established  by 
Radin  in  his  learned  work,  “The  Jews 
Among  the  Greeks  and  Romans,”  that 
there  was  a  carefully  planned  effort  of 
propaganda.  Does  not  indeed  Jesus  tell 
the  Pharisees :  “Ye  compass  sea  and  land 
to  make  one  proselyte”?  Do  not  Juvenal 
and  Horace  complain  of  this  Judaising? 
Were  not  the  Idumeans  proselytised  al¬ 
most  by  force?  “The  Sabbath  and  the 


58  Chosen  Peoples 

Jewish  fasts,”  says  Lecky,  doubtless  fol¬ 
lowing  Josephus,  “became  familiar  facts 
in  all  the  great  cities.”  And  Josephus 
himself  in  that  answer  to  Apion,  which 
Judaism  has  strangely  failed  to  rank  as 
one  of  its  greatest  documents,  declares  in 
noble  language:  “There  ought  to  be  but 
one  Temple  for  one  God  .  .  .  and  this 
Temple  common  to  all  men,  because  He 
is  the  common  God  of  all  men.” 

It  would  be  a  very  tough  tribal  God  that 
could  survive  worshippers  of  this  temper. 
An  ancient  Midrash  taught  that  in  the 
Temple  there  were  seventy  sacrifices  of¬ 
fered  for  the  seventy  nations.  For  the 
mediaeval  and  rationalist  Maimonides  the 
election  of  Israel  scarcely  exists — even 
the  Messiah  is  only  to  be  a  righteous  Con¬ 
queror,  whose  success  will  be  the  test  of 


Chosen  Peoples  59 

his  genuineness.  And  Spinoza — though 
he,  of  course,  is  outside  the  development 
of  the  Synagogue  proper — refused  to  see 
in  the  Jew  any  superiority  save  of  the 
sociological  system  for  ensuring  his  eter¬ 
nity.  The  comparatively  modern  Chas- 
sidism,  anticipating  Mazzini,  teaches  that 
every  nation  and  language  has  a  special 
channel  through  which  it  receives  God’s 
gifts.  Of  contemporary  Reform  Juda¬ 
ism,  the  motto  “Have  we  not  one  father, 
hath  not  one  God  created  us?”  was  for¬ 
mally  adopted  as  the  motto  of  the  Con¬ 
gress  of  Religions  at  Washington.  “The 
forces  of  democracy  are  Israel,”  cries  the 
American  Jew,  David  Lubin,  in  an  ultra¬ 
modern  adaptation  of  the  Talmudic  scale 
of  values.  There  is,  in  fact,  through  our 
post-biblical  literature  almost  a  note  of 


60  Chosen  Peoples 

apology  for  the  assumption  of  the  Divine 
mission:  perhaps  it  is  as  much  the  off¬ 
spring  of  worldly  prudence  as  of  spiritual 
progress.  The  Talmud  observed  that  the 
Law  was  only  given  to  Israel  because  he 
was  so  peculiarly  fierce  he  needed  curbing. 
Abraham  Ibn  Daud  at  the  beginning  of 
the  twelfth  century  urged  that  God  had 
to  reveal  Himself  to  some  nation  to  show 
that  He  did  not  hold  Himself  aloof  from 
the  universe,  leaving  its  rule  to  the  stars: 
it  is  the  very  argument  as  to  the  need  for 
Christ  employed  by  Mr.  Balfour  in  his 
“Foundations  of  Belief.”  Crescas,  in  the 
fourteenth  century,  declared — like  an 
earlier  Buckle — that  the  excellence  of  the 
Jew  sprang  merely  from  the  excellence  of 
Palestine.  Mr.  Abelson,  in  his  recent 
valuable  book  on  Jewish  mysticism,  al- 


Chosen  Peoples  61 

leges  that  when  Rabbi  Akiba  called  the 
Jews  “Sons  of  God”  he  meant  only  that 
all  other  nations  were  idolaters.  But  in 
reality  Akiba  meant  what  he  said — what 
indeed  had  been  said  throughout  the  Bible 
from  Deuteronomy  downwards.  In  the 
words  of  Hosea: 

When  Israel  was  a  child,  then  I  loved  him, 

And  out  of  Egypt  I  called  My  son. 

No  evidence  of  the  universalism  of  Israel’s 
mission  can  away  with  the  fact  that  it  was 
still  his  mission,  the  mission  of  a  Chosen 
People.  And  this  conviction,  permeating 
and  penetrating  his  whole  literature  and 
broidering  itself  with  an  Oriental  exuber¬ 
ance  of  legendary  fantasy,  poetic  or  puer¬ 
ile,  takes  on  in  places  an  intimacy,  some¬ 
times  touching  in  its  tender  mysticism. 


62  Chosen  Peoples 

sometimes  almost  grotesque  in  its  crude 
reminder  to  God  that  after  all  His  own 
glory  and  reputation  are  bound  up  with 
His  people’s,  and  that  He  must  not  go 
too  far  in  His  chastisements  lest  the 
heathen  mock.  Reversed,  this  apprehen¬ 
sion  produced  the  concept  of  the  Chillul 
Hashem ,  “the  profanation  of  the  Name.” 
Israel,  in  his  turn,  was  in  honour  bound 
not  to  lower  the  reputation  of  the  Deity, 
who  had  chosen  him  out.  On  the  con¬ 
trary,  he  was  to  promote  the  Kiddush 
Hashem  “the  sanctification  of  the  Name.” 
Thus  the  doctrine  of  election  made  not  for 
arrogance  but  for  a  sense  of  Noblesse 
'  oblige.  As  the  “Hymn  of  Glory”  recited 

at  New  Year  says  in  a  more  poetic  sense: 

\ 

“His  glory  is  on  me  and  mine  on  Him.” 
“He  loves  His  people,”  says  the  hymn, 


Chosen  Peoples  63 

“and  inhabits  their  praises.”  Indeed,  ac¬ 
cording  to  Schechter,  the  ancient  Rabbis 
actually  conceived  God  as  existing  only 
through  Israel’s  continuous  testimony  and 
ceasing  were  Israel — per  impossibile — to 
disappear.  It  is  a  mysticism  not  without 
affinity  to  Mr.  Wells’s.  A  Chassidic 
Rabbi,  quoted  by  Mr.  Wassilevsky, 
teaches  in  the  same  spirit  that  God  and 
Israel,  like  Father  and  Son,  are  each  in¬ 
complete  without  the  other.  In  another 
passage  of  Hosea — a  passage  recited  at 
the  everyday  winding  of  phylacteries — 
the  imagery  is  of  wedded  lovers.  “I  will 
betroth  thee  unto  Me  for  ever,  Yea  I  will 
betroth  thee  unto  Me  in  righteousness  and 
in  judgment  and  in  loving-kindness  and 
in  mercy.” 

But  it  is  in  the  glowing,  poetic  soul  of 


64  Chosen  Peoples 

J ehuda  Ha-Levi  that  this  election  of 
Israel,  like  the  passion  for  Palestine,  finds 
its  supreme  and  uncompromising  expres¬ 
sion.  “Israel,”  declares  the  author  of  the 
“Cuzari”  in  a  famous  dictum,  “is  among 
the  nations  like  the  heart  among  the 
limbs.”  Do  not  imagine  he  referred  to 
the  heart  as  a  pump,  feeding  the  veins  of 
the  nations — Harvey  was  still  five  cen¬ 
turies  in  the  future — he  meant  the  heart 
as  the  centre  of  feeling  and  the  symbol  of 
the  spirit.  And  examining  the  question 
why  Israel  had  been  thus  chosen,  he  de¬ 
clares  plumply  that  it  is  as  little  worthy  of 
consideration  as  why  the  animals  had  not 
been  created  men.  This  is,  of  course,  the 
only  answer.  The  wind  of  creation  and 
inspiration  bloweth  where  it  listeth.  As 


Chosen  Peoples  65 

Tennyson  said  in  a  similar  connection : 


And  if  it  is  so,  so  it  is,  you  know, 
And  if  it  be  so,  so  be  it  1 


V 


BUT  although,  as  with  all  other  mani¬ 
festations  of  genius,  Science  cannot 
tell  us  why  the  J ewish  race  was  so  endowed 
spiritually,  it  can  show  us  by  parallel  cases 
that  there  is  nothing  unique  in  consider¬ 
ing  yourself  a  Chosen  People— as  indeed 
the  accusation  with  which  we  began  re¬ 
minds  us.  And  it  can  show  us  that  a  na¬ 
tion’s  assignment  of  a  mission  to  itself  is 
not  a  sudden  growth.  “Unlike  any  other 
nation,”  says  the  learned  and  saintly 
leader  of  Reform  Judaism,  Dr.  Kohler, 
in  his  article  on  “Chosen  People”  in  the 
Jewish  Encyclopaedia ,  “the  Jewish  people 
began  their  career  conscious  of  their  life- 


66 


Chosen  Peoples  67 

purpose  and  world-duty  as  the  priests  and 
teachers  of  a  universal  religious  truth.” 
This  is  indeed  a  strange  statement,  and 
only  on  the  theory  that  its  author  was  ex¬ 
pounding  the  biblical  standpoint,  and  not 
his  own,  can  it  be  reconciled  with  his  gen¬ 
eral  doctrine  of  progress  and  evolution  in 
Hebrew  thought.  It  would  seem  to  ac¬ 
cept  the  Sinaitic  Covenant  as  a  literal  epi¬ 
sode,  and  even  to  synchronise  the  Mission 
with  it.  But  an  investigation  of  the  his¬ 
tory  of  other  Chosen  Peoples  will,  I  fear, 
dissipate  any  notion  that  the  Sinaitic 
Covenant  was  other  than  a  svmbolic  sum- 
mary  of  the  national  genius  for  religion,  a 
sublime  legend  retrospectively  created. 
And  the  mission  to  other  nations  must  have 
been  evolved  still  later.  “The  conception 
or  feeling  of  a  mission  grew  up  and  was 


68  Chosen  Peoples 

developed  by  slow  degrees,”  says  Mr. 
Montefiore,  and  this  sounds  much  nearer 
the  truth.  For,  as  I  said,  history  is  the 
sole  clue  to  the  Bible — history,  which  ac¬ 
cording  to  Bacon,  is  “philosophy  teaching 
by  example.”  And  the  more  modern  the 
history  is,  and  the  nearer  in  time,  the  bet¬ 
ter  we  can  understand  it.  We  have  be¬ 
fore  our  very  eyes  the  moving  spectacle  of 
the  newest  of  nations  setting  herself 
through  a  President-Prophet  the  noblest 
mission  ever  formulated  outside  the  Bible. 
Through  another  great  prophet — sprung 
like  Amos  from  the  people — through 
Abraham  Lincoln,  America  had  already 
swept  away  slavery.  I  do  not  know  ex¬ 
actly  when  she  began  to  call  herself  “God’s 
own  country,”  but  her  National  Anthem, 
“My  Country,  ’tis  of  thee,”  dating  from 


Chosen  Peoples  69 

1832,  fixes  the  date  when  America,  soon 
after  the  second  war  with  England,  which 
ended  in  1814,  consciously  felt  herself  as 
a  Holy  Land;  far  as  visitors  like  Dickens 
felt  her  from  the  perfection  implied  in  her 
soaring  Spread-Eagle  rhetoric.  The  Pil¬ 
grim  Fathers  went  to  America  merely  for 
their  own  freedom  of  religious  worship: 
they  were  actually  intolerant  to  others. 
From  a  sectarian  patriotism  developed 
what  I  have  called  “The  Melting  Pot,” 
with  its  high  universal  mission,  first  at 
home  and  now  over  the  world  at  large. 

The  stages  of  growth  are  still  more 
clearly  marked  in  English  history.  That 
national  self-consciousness  which  to-day 
gives  itself  the  mission  of  defending  the 
liberties  of  mankind,  and  which  stands  in 
the  breach  undaunted  and  indomitable,  be- 


70  Chosen  Peoples 

gan  with  that  mere  insular  patriotism 
which  finds  such  moving  expression  in  the 
pasan  of  Shakespeare: 

This  happy  breed  of  men,  this  little  world, 
This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea, 

•  •  •  •  •  •  • 

This  blessed  plot,  this  earth,  this  realm,  this 
England, 

•  •••••• 

This  land  of  such  dear  souls,  this  dear,  dear 
land. 

This  sense  of  itself  had  been  born  only 
in  the  thirteenth  century,  and  at  first  the 
growing  consciousness  of  national  power, 
though  it  soon  developed  an  assurance  of 
special  protection — “the  favour  of  the  love 
of  Heaven,”  wrote  Milton  in  his  “Areo- 
pagitica,”  “we  have  great  argument  to 
think  in  a  peculiar  manner  propitious  and 
propending  towards  us” — was  tempered 


Chosen  Peoples  71 

by  that  humility  still  to  be  seen  in  the 
liturgy  of  its  Church,  which  ascribes  its 
victories  not  to  the  might  of  the  English 
arm,  but  to  the  favour  of  God.  But  one 
hundred  and  twenty-five  years  after 
Shakespeare,  the  land  which  the  Eliza¬ 
bethan  translators  of  the  Bible  called 
“Our  Sion,”  and  whose  mission,  accord¬ 
ing  to  Milton,  had  been  to  sound  forth 
“the  first  tidings  and  trumpet  of  reforma¬ 
tion  to  all  Europe,”  had  sunk  to  the  swag¬ 
gering  militarism  that  found  expression 
in  “Rule,  Britannia.” 

When  Britain  first  at  Heaven’s  command 
Arose  from  out  the  azure  main, 

This  was  the  charter  of  the  land, 

And  guardian  angels  sung  this  strain: 

Rule,  Britannia,  rule  the  waves; 

Britons  never  will  be  slaves. 


72  Chosen  Peoples 

The  nations  not  so  blest  as  thee 
Must  in  their  turn  to  tyrants  fall; 

While  thou  shalt  flourish,  great  and  free, 
The  dread  and  envy  of  them  all. 

To  thee  belongs  the  rural  reign, 

Thy  cities  shall  with  commerce  shine: 

All  thine  shall  be  the  subject  main, 

And  every  shore  it  circles,  thine. 

It  is  the  true  expression  of  its  period — 
a  period  which  Sir  John  Seeley  in  his  “Ex¬ 
pansion  of  England”  characterizes  as  the 
period  of  the  struggle  with  France 
for  the  possession  of  India  and  the 
New  World:  there  were  no  less  than 
seven  wars  with  France,  for  France 
had  replaced  Spain  in  that  great  com¬ 
petition  of  the  five  western  maritime 
States  of  Europe  for  Transatlantic  trade 
and  colonies,  in  which  Seeley  sums  up  the 
bulk  of  two  centuries  of  European  history. 


Chosen  Peoples  73 

Well  may  Mr.  Chesterton  point  to  the 
sinking  of  the  Armada  as  the  date  when 
an  Old  Testament  sense  of  being  “an¬ 
swered  in  stormy  oracles  of  air  and  sea” 
lowered  Englishmen  into  a  Chosen  Peo¬ 
ple.  Shakespeare  saw  the  sea  serving 
England  in  the  modest  office  of  a  moat: 
it  was  now  to  be  the  high-road  of  Empire. 
The  Armada  was  shattered  in  1588.  In 
1600  the  East  India  Company  is  formed 
to  trade  all  over  the  world.  In  1606  is 
founded  the  British  colony  of  Virginia  and 
in  1620  New  England.  It  helps  us  to  un¬ 
derstand  the  dual  and  conflicting  energies 
stimulated  in  the  atmosphere  of  celestial 
protection,  if  we  recall  that  it  was  in  1604 
that  was  initiated  the  great  Elizabethan 
translation  of  the  Bible. 

In  Cromwell,  that  typical  Englishman, 


74  Chosen  Peoples 

these  two  strands  of  impulse  are  seen 
united.  Ever  conceiving  himself  the  serv¬ 
ant  of  God,  he  seized  Jamaica  in  a  time 
of  profound  peace  and  in  defiance  of 
treaty.  Was  not  Catholic  Spain  the 
enemy  of  God?  Delenda  est  Carthago  is 
his  feeling  towards  the  rival  Holland. 
Miracles  attend  his  battle.  “The  Lord  by 
his  Providence  put  a  cloud  over  the  Moon, 
thereby  giving  us  the  opportunity  to  draw 
off  those  horse.”  Yet  this  elect  of  God 
ruthlessly  massacres  surrendered  Irish 
garrisons.  “Sir,”  he  writes  with  almost 
childish  naivete,  “God  hath  taken  away 
your  eldest  son  by  a  cannon  shot.”  We 
do  not  need  Carlyle’s  warning  that  he  was 
not  a  hypocrite.  Does  not  Marvell,  la¬ 
menting  his  death,  record  in  words  curi- 


Chosen  Peoples  75 

ously  like  Bismarck’s  that  his  deceased 
hero 

The  soldier  taught  that  inward  mail  to  wear 
And  fearing  God,  how  they  should  nothing 
fear? 

The  fact  is  that  great  and  masterful 
souls  identify  themselves  with  the  uni¬ 
verse.  And  so  do  great  and  masterful 
nations.  It  is  a  dangerous  tendency. 

At  the  death  of  Queen  Anne  England 
stood  at  the  top  of  the  nations.  But  it 
was  a  greatness  tainted  by  the  slave-trade 
abroad,  and  poverty,  ignorance,  and  gin¬ 
drinking  at  home.  We  recapture  the  at¬ 
mosphere  of  “Rule,  Britannia”  when  we 
recall  that  Thomson  wrote  it  to  the  peals 
of  the  joy-bells  and  the  flare  of  the  bon¬ 
fires  by  which  the  mob  celebrated  its  fore- 


76  Chosen  Peoples 

ing  Walpole  into  a  war  to  safeguard  Brit¬ 
ish  trade  in  the  Spanish  main.  Seeley 
claims,  indeed,  that  the  growth  of  the  Em¬ 
pire  was  always  sub-conscious  or  semi¬ 
conscious  at  its  best.  This  is  not  wholly 
true,  for  in  “The  Masque  of  Alfred”  in 
which  “Rule,  Britannia”  is  enshrined, 
Thomson  displays  as  keen  and  exact  a 
sense  of  the  lines  of  England’s  destiny  as 
Seeley  acquired  by  painful  historic  excog¬ 
itation.  For  after  a  vision  which  irresist¬ 
ibly  recalls  the  grosser  Hebrew  prophecies : 

I  see  thy  commerce,  Britain,  grasp  the  world: 
All  nations  serve  thee;  every  foreign  flood, 
Subjected,  pays  its  tribute  to  the  Thames, 

he  points  to  the  virgin  shores  “beyond  the 
vast  Atlantic  surge”  and  cries: 

This  new  world, 
Shook  to  its  centre,  trembles  at  her  name: 


Chosen  Peoples  77 

And  there  her  sons,  with  aim  exalted,  sow 
The  seeds  of  rising  empire,  arts,  and  arms. 

Britons,  proceed,  the  subject  deep  command, 
Awe  with  jour  navies  every  hostile  land. 

Vain  are  their  threats,  their  armies  all  are  vain: 
They  rule  the  balanced  world  who  rule  the 
main. 

But  you  have  only  to  remember  that 
Seeley’s  famous  book  was  written  ex¬ 
pressly  to  persuade  the  England  of  1883 
not  to  give  up  India  and  the  Colonies,  to 
see  how  little  “Buie,  Britannia”  expressed 
the  truer  soul  of  Britain.  The  purifica¬ 
tion  of  England  which  the  Methodist 
movement  began  and  which  manifested 
itself,  among  other  things,  in  sweeping 
away  the  slave-trade,  necessitated  a  less 
crude  formula  for  the  still  invincible  in¬ 
stinct  of  expansion,  and  in  Kipling  a 
prophet  arose,  of  a  genius  akin  to  that  of 


78  Chosen  Peoples 

the  Old  Testament,  to  spiritualize  the  doc¬ 
trine  of  the  Chosen  People.  The  mission 
which  in  Thomson  is  purely  self-centred 
becomes  in  Kipling  almost  as  universal  as 
the  visions  of  the  Hebrew  bards. 

The  Lord  our  God  Most  High, 

He  hath  made  the  deep  as  dry, 

He  hath  smote  for  us  a  pathway  to  the  ends  of 
all  the  earth. 

But  it  is  only  as  the  instrument  of  His 
purpose,  and  that  purpose  is  characteris¬ 
tically  practical. 

Keep  ye  the  Law — be  swift  in  all  obedience ; 
Clear  the  land  of  evil,  drive  the  road  and  bridge 
the  ford, 

Make  ye  sure  to  each  his  own, 

That  he  reap  where  he  hath  sown ; 

By  the  peace  among  our  peoples  let  men  know 
we  serve  the  Lord. 


And  it  is  a  true  picture  of  British  activities. 


Chosen  Peoples  79 

Even  thus  has  England  on  the  whole 
ruled  the  territories  into  which  adventure 
or  economic  motives  drew  her.  The  very 
Ambassador  from  Germany,  Prince  Lich- 
nowsky,  agrees  with  Rhodes  that  the  sal¬ 
vation  of  mankind  lies  in  British  imperial¬ 
ism.  But  note  how  the  less  spiritual  fac¬ 
tors  are  ignored,  how  the  prophet  presents 
his  people  as  a  nation  of  pioneer  martyrs, 
how  the  mission,  finally  become  conscious 
of  itself,  gilds  with  backward  rays  the 
whole  path  of  national  advance,  as  the 
trail  of  light  from  the  stern  of  a  vessel 
gives  the  illusion  that  it  has  come  by  a 
shining  road.  Missions  are  not  discov¬ 
ered  till  they  are  already  in  action.  Not 
unlike  those  archers  of  whom  the  Talmud 
wittily  says,  they  first  shoot  the  arrow  and 
then  fix  the  target,  nations  ascribe  to  them- 


80  Chosen  Peoples 

selves  purposes  of  which  they  were  orig¬ 
inally  unconscious.  First  comes  the  ting¬ 
ling  consciousness  of  achievement  and 
power,  then  a  glamour  of  retrospective 
legend  to  explain  and  justify  it.  Thus 
it  is  that  that  great  struggle  for  sea-power 
to  which  Spain,  Portugal,  Holland,  Eng¬ 
land,  and  France  all  contributed  maritime 
genius  and  boundless  courage,  becomes 
transformed  under  the  half-accidental  suc¬ 
cess  of  one  nation  into  an  almost  religious 
epic  of  a  destined  wave-ruler.  There 
could  not  be  a  finer  British  spirit  than  Mr. 
Chesterton’s  fallen  friend,  the  poet  Ver- 
nede,  yet  even  he  writes: — 

God  grant  to  ns  the  old  Armada  weather. 

Thomson  was  not  poet  enough — nor  the 
eighteenth  century  naive  enough — to  ere- 


Chosen  Peoples  81 

ate  a  legend  in  sober  earnest.  But  the 
fact  that  he  throws  “Rule,  Britannia’'  eight 
centuries  back  to  the  time  of  Alfred  the 
Great,  before  whom  this  glorious  pageant 
of  his  country’s  future  is  prophetically  un¬ 
rolled,  serves  to  illustrate  the  retrospec¬ 
tive  habit  of  national  missions. 

The  history  of  England  is  brief,  and  the 
mission  evolved  in  her  seven  centuries  has 
not  yet  finally  shaped  itself,  is  indeed  now 
shaping  itself  afresh  in  the  furnace  of  war. 
Her  poets  have  not  always  troubled  with 
the  soul  of  her.  They  have  often,  as 
Courthope  complained  of  Keats,  turned 
away  from  her  destinies  to 

Magic  casements  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  faery  lands  in  perilous  seas  forlorn. 

But  Israel  had  abundant  time  to  per- 


82  Chosen  Peoples 

feet  her  conception  of  herself.  From 
Moses  to  Ezra  was  over  a  thousand  years, 
and  the  roots  of  the  race  are  placed  still 
earlier.  Can  we  doubt  it  was  by  a  proc¬ 
ess  analogous  to  that  we  see  at  work  in 
England,  that  Israel  evolved  into  a  Peo¬ 
ple  chosen  for  world-service?  The  Cov¬ 
enant  of  Israel  was  inscribed  slowly  in 
the  Jewish  heart:  it  had  no  more  existence 
elsewhere  than  the  New  Covenant  which 
Jeremiah  announced  the  Lord  would  write 
there,  no  more  objective  reality  than  the 
Charter  which  Britain  received  when 
“first  at  Heaven’s  command”  she  “rose 
from  out  the  azure  main,”  or  than  that 
Contrat  Social  by  which  Rousseau  ex- 
pressed  the  rights  of  the  individual  in  so¬ 
ciety.  But  to  say  this  is  not  to  make  the 
mission  false.  Ibsen  might  label  these 


Chosen  Peoples  83 

vitalizing  impulses  “Life-illusions,”  but 
the  criteria  of  objective  truth  do  not  apply 
to  volitional  verities.  National  missions 
become  false  only  when  nations  are  false  to 
them.  Nor  does  the  gradualness  of  their 
evolution  rob  them  of  their  mystery. 
Hamlet  is  not  less  inspired  because 
Shakespeare  began  as  a  writer  of  pothooks 
and  hangers. 

If  it  is  suggested  that  to  explain  the 
Bible  by  men  and  nations  under  its  spell  is 
to  reason  in  a  circle,  the  answer  is  that 
the  biblical  vocabulary  merely  provides 
a  medium  of  expression  for  a  universal 
tendency.  Claudian,  addressing  the  Em¬ 
peror  Theodosius,  wrote: — 

O  nimium  dilecte  deo,  cui  militat  aether. 

The  Egyptian  god  Ammon,  in  the  great 


84  Chosen  Peoples 

battle  epic  of  Rameses  II,  assured  the 
monarch : — 

Lo,  I  am  with  thee,  my  son ;  fear  not,  Ramessu 
Miammon ! 

Ra,  thy  father,  is  with  thee,  his  hand  shall  up¬ 
hold  thee  in  danger, 

More  am  I  worth  unto  thee  than  thousands  and 
thousands  of  soldiers. 

The  preamble  to  the  modern  Japanese 
Constitution  declares  it  to  be  “in  pursu¬ 
ance  of  a  great  policy  co-extensive  with  the 
Heavens  and  the  Earth.” 


VI 


Returning  now  finally  to  our 

starting-point,  the  proposition  that 
“Germanism  is  Judaism,”  we  are  able  to 
see  its  full  grotesqueness.  If  Germanism 
resembles  Judaism,  it  is  as  a  monkey  re¬ 
sembles  a  man.  Where  it  does  suggest 
Judaism  is  in  the  sense  it  gives  the  mean¬ 
est  of  its  citizens  that  they  form  part  of  a 
great  historic  organism,  which  moves  to 
great  purposes:  a  sense  which  the  poorer 
Englishman  has  unfortunately  lacked,  and 
which  is  only  now  awakening  in  the  com¬ 
mon  British  breast.  But  even  here  the 
affinities  of  Germany  are  rather  with 
Japan  than  with  Judsea.  For  in  Japan, 


85 


86  Chosen  Peoples 

too,  beneath  all  the  romance  of  Bushido 
and  the  Samurai,  lies  the  asphyxiation  of 
the  individual  and  his  sacrifice  to  the  State. 
It  is  the  resurrection  of  those  ancient 
Pagan  Constitutions  for  which  individ¬ 
uality  scarcely  existed,  which  could  ex¬ 
pose  infants  or  kill  off  old  men  because 
the  State  was  the  supreme  ethical  end; 
it  is  the  revival  on  a  greater  scale  of  the 
mediaeval  city  commune,  which  sucked  its 
vigorous  life  from  the  veins  of  its  citizens. 
Even  so  Prussia,  by  welding  its  subservi¬ 
ent  citizens  into  one  gigantic  machine  of 
aggression,  has  given  a  new  reading  to 
the  Gospel:  “Blessed  are  the  meek,  for 
they  shall  inherit  the  earth.” 

Nietzsche,  who,  though  he  strove  to  up¬ 
set  the  old  Hebrew  values,  saw  clearly 
through  the  real  Prussian  peril,  defined 


Chosen  Peoples  87 

such  a  State  as  that  “in  which  the  slow 
suicide  of  all  is  called  Life,”  and  “a  wel¬ 
come  service  unto  all  preachers  of  death” 
— a  cold,  ill-smelling,  monstrous  idol. 
Nor  is  this  the  only  affinity  between 
Prussia  and  Japan.  “We  are,”  boasts 
a  Japanese  writer,  “a  people  of  the  pres¬ 
ent  and  the  Tangible,  of  the  Broad  Day¬ 
light  and  the  Plainly  Visible.” 

But  Germany  was  not  always  thus. 
“High  deeds,  O  Germans,  are  to  come 
from  you,”  wrote  Wordsworth  in  his 
“Sonnets  dedicated  to  Liberty.”  And  it 
throws  light  upon  the  nature  of  Missions 
to  recall  that  when  she  lay  at  the  feet  of 
Napoleon  after  Jena,  the  mission  pro¬ 
claimed  for  her  by  Fichte  was  one  of  peace 
and  righteousness — to  penetrate  the  life 
of  humanity  by  her  religion — and  he  de- 


88  Chosen  Peoples 

nounced  the  dreams  of  universal  monarchy 
which  would  destroy  national  individual¬ 
ity.  Calling  on  his  people  as  “  the  con¬ 
secrated  and  inspired  ones  of  a  Divine 
world-plan,”  “To  you,”  he  says,  “out  of 
all  other  modern  nations  the  germs  of  hu¬ 
man  perfection  are  especially  committed. 
It  is  yours  to  found  an  empire  of  mind 
and  reason — to  destroy  the  dominion  of 
rude  physical  power  as  the  ruler  of  the 
world.”  And  throwing  this  mission  back¬ 
wards,  he  sees  in  what  the  outer  world  calls 
the  invasion  of  the  Roman  Empire  by  the 
Goths  and  Huns  the  proof  that  the  Ger¬ 
mans  have  always  stemmed  the  tide  of 
tyrant  domination.  But  Fichte  belonged 
to  the  generation  of  Kant  and  Beethoven. 
Hegel,  coming  a  little  later,  though  as 
non-nationalist  as  Goethe,  and  a  welcomer 


Chosen  Peoples  89 

of  the  Napoleonic  invasion,  yet  prophe¬ 
sied  that  if  the  Germans  were  once  forced 
to  cast  off  their  inertia,  they,  “by  preserv¬ 
ing  in  their  contact  with  outward  things 
the  intensity  of  their  inner  life,  will  per¬ 
chance  surpass  their  teachers”:  and  in 
curiously  prophetic  language  he  called  for 
a  hero  “to  realize  by  blood  and  iron  the 
political  regeneration  of  Germany.” 

If  Treitschke,  too,  believed  in  force,  he 
had  a  high  moral  ideal  for  his  nation. 
The  other  nations  are  feeble  and  decadent. 
Germany  is  to  hold  the  sceptre  of  the  na¬ 
tions,  so  as  to  ensure  the  peace  of  the 
world.  It  is  only  in  Bernhardi  that  we 
find  war  in  itself  glorified  as  the  stimulus 
of  nations.  Even  this  ideal  has  a  per¬ 
verted  nobility;  as  Pol  Areas,  a  modern 
Greek  writer,  says:  “If  the  devil  knew 


90  Chosen  Peoples 

he  had  horns  the  cherubim  would  offer  him 
their  place.”  And  though  it  was  only  in 
the  swelled  head  of  the  conqueror  that  the 
brutal  philosophy  of  the  Will-to-Power 
germinated,  it  was  not  so  much  the  “blood 
and  iron”  of  Junkerdom  that  perverted 
Prussia — Junkerdom  still  lives  simply — 
as  the  gross  industrial  prosperity  that  fol¬ 
lowed  on  the  victory  of  1870.  A  modern 
German  author  describes  his  countrymen 
— it  is  true  he  has  turned  Mohammedan, 
probably  out  of  disgust — as  tragically  de¬ 
generated  and  turned  into  a  gold-greedy, 
pleasure-seeking,  title-hungry  pack.  This 
industrial  transformation  of  the  nobler 
soul  of  Germany  is  by  V erhaeren — attack¬ 
ing  Judaism  from  another  angle — as¬ 
cribed  to  its  Jews,  so  it  is  comforting  to 
remember  that  when  England  started  the 


Chosen  Peoples  91 

East  India  Company  there  was  scarcely 
a  Jew  in  England.  No,  Germany  is 
clearly  where  England  was  in  the  seven¬ 
teenth  century,  and  in  Prussia  England 
meets  her  past  face  to  face.  Her  past, 
but  infinitely  more  conscious  and  conse¬ 
quent  than  her  “Rule,  Britannia”  period, 
with  a  ruthless  logic  that  does  not  shrink 
from  any  conclusions.  Wliile  England’s 
right  hand  hardly  knew  what  her  left  was 
doing,  Germany  s  right  hand  is  drawing 
up  a  philosophic  justification  of  her  sin¬ 
ister  activities.  There  is  in  Henry 
James’s  posthumous  novel — “The  Sense 
of  the  Past” — a  young  man  who  gets 
locked  up  in  the  Past  and  cannot  get  back 
to  his  own  era.  This  is  the  fate  that  now 
menaces  civilization.  Nor  is  the  civili¬ 
zation  that  followed  the  struggle  for 


92  '  Chosen  Peoples 

America  by  the  scramble  for  Africa  en- 
•/ 

tirely  blameless.  Germany,  federated 
too  late  for  the  first  melee  and  smarting 
under  centuries  of  humiliation — did  not 
Louis  XIV  insolently  seize  Strassburg? 
— is  avenging  on  our  century  the  sins  of 
the  seventeenth. 

So  far  from  Germanism  being  synony¬ 
mous  with  Judaism,  its  analogies  are  to  be 
sought  within  the  five  maritime  countries 
which  preceded  Germany,  albeit  less  effi¬ 
ciently,  in  the  path  of  militarism.  It  is  the 
same  alliance  as  prevailed  everywhere  be¬ 
tween  the  traders  and  the  armies  and 
navies,  and  the  Kaiser’s  crime  consists 
mainly  in  turning  back  the  movement  of 
the  world  which  through  the  Hague  Con¬ 
ferences  was  approaching  brotherhood,  or 
at  least  a  mitigation  of  the  horrors  of  war. 


Chosen  Peoples  93 

His  blasphemies  are  no  less  archaic.  He 
repeats  Oliver  Cromwell,  but  with  less 
simplicity,  while  his  artistic  aspiration 
complicates  the  Puritan  with  the  Cava¬ 
lier.  “From  childhood,”  he  is  quoted  as 
saying,  “I  have  been  under  the  influence 
of  five  men — Alexander,  Julius  Caesar, 
Theodoric  II,  Frederick  the  Great,  and 
Napoleon.”  No  great  man  moulds  him¬ 
self  thus  like  others.  It  is  but  a  theatrical 
greatness.  But  anyhow  none  of  these 
names  are  Jewish,  and  not  thus  were  “the 
Kings  of  Jerusalem”  even  “six  thousand 
years  ago.”  Our  kings  had  the  dull  duty 
of  copying  out  and  studying  the  Torah, 
and  the  Rabbis  reminded  monarchy  that 
the  Torah  demands  forty-eight  qualifica¬ 
tions,  whereas  royalty  only  thirty,  and  that 
the  crown  of  a  good  name  is  the  best  of  all. 


94  Chosen  Peoples 

Compare  the  German  National  Anthem 
“Heil  dir  im  Siegeskranz”  with  the  noble 
prayer  for  the  J ewish  King  in  the  seventy- 
second  psalm,  if  you  wish  to  understand 
the  difference  between  Judaism  and  Ger¬ 
manism.  This  King,  too,  is  to  conquer  his 
enemies,  but  he  is  also  to  redeem  the  needy 
from  oppression  and  violence,  “and  pre¬ 
cious  will  their  blood  be  in  his  sight.” 


VII 


IF  I  were  asked  to  sum  up  in  a  word 
the  essential  difference  between  Juda¬ 
ism  and  Germanism,  it  would  be  the  word 
“Recessional.”  While  the  prophets  and 
historians  of  Germany  monotonously 
glorify  their  nation,  the  Jewish  writers  as 
monotonously  rebuke  theirs.  “You  only 
have  I  known  among  all  the  families  of 
the  earth,”  says  the  message  through 
Amos.  “Therefore  I  will  visit  upon  you 
all  your  iniquities.”  The  Bible,  as  I  have 
said  before,  is  an  anti-Semitic  book.  “Is¬ 
rael  is  the  villain,  not  the  hero,  of  his  own 
story.”  Alone  among  epics,  it  is  out  for 
truth,  not  high  heroics.  To  flout  the 


95 


96  Chosen  Peoples 

Pharisees  was  not  reserved  for  Jesus. 
“Behold,  ye  fast  for  strife  and  conten¬ 
tion,”  said  Isaiah,  “and  to  smite  with  the 
fist  of  wickedness.”  While  some  German 
writers,  not  content  with  the  great  men 
Germany  has  so  abundantly  produced, 
vaunt  that  all  others,  from  Jesus  to  Dante, 
from  Montaigne  to  Michael  Angelo,  are  of 
Teuton  blood,  Jewish  literature  unflinch¬ 
ingly  exposes  the  flaws  even  of  a  Moses 
and  a  David.  It  is  this  passion  for  verac¬ 
ity  unknown  among  other  peoples — is 
even  Washington’s  story  told  without 
gloss? — that  gives  false  colour  to  the  leg¬ 
end  of  Israel’s  ancient  savagery.  “The 
title  of  a  nation  to  its  territory,”  says 
Seeley,  “is  generally  to  be  sought  in  primi¬ 
tive  times  and  would  be  found,  if  we  could 
recover  it,  to  rest  upon  violence  and  mas- 


Chosen  Peoples  97 

sacre.”  The  dispossession  of  the  Red  In¬ 
dian  by  America,  of  the  Maori  by  New 
Zealand,  is  almost  within  living  memory. 
But  in  national  legends  this  universal 
process  is  sophisticated. 

Tu  regere  imperio  populos,  Romane,  memento, 

the  iEneid  told  the  all-invading  Roman, 
putting  of  course  the  contemporary  ideal 
backwards — as  all  missons  are  put — and 
into  the  prophetic  mouth  of  Jove: — 

Hae  tibi  erunt  artis,  pacisque  imponere  morem, 
Parcere  subjectis  et  debelare  superbos. 

It  was  for  similarly  exalted  purposes  that 
Israel  was  to  occupy  Palestine,  yet  with 
what  unique  denigration  the  Bible  turns 
upon  him:  “Not  for  thy  righteousness  or 
for  the  uprightness  of  thy  heart  dost  thou 


98  Chosen  Peoples 

go  to  possess  this  land;  but  for  the  wicked¬ 
ness  of  these  nations  the  Lord  thy  God 
doth  drive  them  out  from  before  thee.” 

In  English  literature  this  note  of  “Re¬ 
cessional”  was  sounded  long  before  Kip¬ 
ling.  Milton,  though  he  claimed  that 
“God’s  manner”  was  to  reveal  himself 
“first  to  His  Englishmen,”  added  that 
they  “mark  not  the  methods  of  His  coun¬ 
sel  and  are  unworthy.” 

“Is  India  free,”  wrote  Cowper,  “or  do 
we  grind  her  still?”  “Secure  from  actual 
warfare,”  sang  Coleridge,  “we  have  loved 
to  swell  the  war-whoop.”  For  Words¬ 
worth  England  was  simply  the  least  evil 
of  the  nations.  And  Mr.  Chesterton  has 
just  written  a  “History  of  England”  in 
the  very  spirit  of  a  Micah  flagellating  the 
classes  “who  loved  fields  and  seized  them.” 


Chosen  Peoples  99 

But  if  in  Germany  a  voice  of  criticism 
breaks  the  chorus  of  self-adoration,  it  is 
usually  from  a  Jew  like  Maximilian  Har¬ 
den,  for  Jews,  as  Ambassador  Gerard 
testifies,  represent  almost  the  only  real 
culture  in  Germany.  I  have  been  at  pains 
to  examine  the  literature  of  the  German 
Synagogue,  which  if  Germanism  were 
Judiasm,  ought  to  show  a  double  dose  of 
original  sin.  But  so  far  from  finding  any 
swagger  of  a  Chosen  People,  whether 
Jewish  or  German,  I  find  in  its  most  popu¬ 
lar  work — Lazarus’s  “Soziale  Ethik  im 
Judentum” — published  as  late  as  Novem¬ 
ber,  1913,  by  the  League  of  German  Jews 
— a  grave  indictment  of  militarism.  For 
the  venerable  philosopher,  while  justly  ex¬ 
plaining  the  glamour  of  the  army  by  its 
subordination  of  the  individual  to  the  com- 


100  Chosen  Peoples 

munal  weal,  yet  pointed  out  emphatically 
that  what  unites  individuals  separates 
nations.  “The  work  of  justice  shall  be 
peace,”  he  quotes  from  Isaiah.  I  am  far 
from  supposing  that  the  old  Germany  of 
Goethe  and  Schiller  and  Lessing  is  not 
still  latent — indeed,  we  know  that  one 
Professor  suggested  at  a  recent  Nietzsche 
anniversary  that  the  Germans  should  try 
to  rise  not  to  Supermen  but  to  Men,  and 
that  another  now  lies  in  prison  for  explain¬ 
ing  in  his  “Biologie  des  Krieges”  that  the 
real  objection  to  war  is  simply  that  it  com¬ 
pels  men  to  act  unlike  men.  So  that, 
when  moreover  we  remember  that  the  no¬ 
blest  and  most  practical  treatise  on  “Per¬ 
petual  Peace”  came  from  that  other  Ger¬ 
man  professor,  Kant,  the  hope  is  not  alto¬ 
gether  ausgechlossen  that  in  the  internal 


Chosen  Peoples  101 

convulsion  that  must  follow  the  war,  there 
may  be  an  upheaval  of  that  finer  German¬ 
ism  of  which  we  should  be  only  too  proud 
to  say  that  it  is  Judaism. 


VIII 


BUT  meantime  we  are  waiting,  and 
the  soul  “waiteth  for  the  Lord  more 
than  watchmen  look  for  the  morning,  yea, 
more  than  watchmen  for  the  morning.” 
Again,  as  in  earlier  periods  of  history,  the 
world  lies  in  darkness,  listening  to  the 
silence  of  God — a  silence  that  can  be  felt. 

“ W atchmen,  what  of  the  night  ?”  Such 
a  blackness  fell  upon  the  ancient  Jews 
when  Hadrian  passed  the  plough  over 
Mount  Zion.  But,  turning  from  empty 
apocalyptic  visions,  they  drew  in  on  them¬ 
selves  and  created  an  inner  Jerusalem, 
which  has  solaced  and  safeguarded  them 
ever  since.  Such  a  blackness  fell  on  the 


102 


Chosen  Peoples  103 

ancient  Christians  when  the  Huns  invaded 
Rome,  and  the  young  Christian  world, 
robbed  of  its  millennial  hopes,  began  to 
wonder  if  perchance  this  was  not  the  venge¬ 
ance  of  the  discarded  gods.  But  drawing 
in  on  themselves,  they  learned  from  St. 
Augustine  to  create  an  inner  “City  of 
God.”  How  shall  humanity  meet  this 
blackest  crisis  of  all?  What  new  “City 
of  God”  can  it  build  on  the  tragic  wreck¬ 
age  of  a  thousand  years  of  civilization? 
Has  Israel  no  contribution  to  offer  here 
but  the  old  quarrel  with  Christianity? 
But  that  quarrel  shrinks  into  comparative 
concord  beside  the  common  peril  from  the 
resurrected  gods  of  paganism,  from  Thor 
and  Odin  and  Priapus.  And  it  was 
always  an  exaggerated  quarrel — half 
misunderstanding,  like  most  quarrels. 


104  Chosen  Peoples 

Neither  St.  Augustine  nor  St.  Anselm 
believed  God  was  other  than  One.  Jesus 
but  applied  to  himself  distributively — as 
logicians  say — those  conceptions  of  divine 
sonship  and  suffering  service  which  were 
already  assets  of  Judaism,  and  but  for  the 
theology  of  atonement  woven  by  Paul  un¬ 
der  Greek  influences,  either  of  them  might 
have  carried  Judaism  forward  on  that 
path  of  universalism  which  its  essential 
genius  demands,  and  which  even  without 
them  it  only  just  missed.  Is  it  not  humili¬ 
ating  that  Islam,  whose  Koran  expressly 
recalls  its  obligation  to  our  prophets, 
should  have  beaten  them  in  the  work  of 
universalization  ?  Maimonides  acknowl¬ 
edged  the  good  work  done  by  Jesus  and 
Mohammed  in  propagating  the  Bible. 
But  if  the  universalism  they  achieved  held 


Chosen  Peoples  105 

faulty  elements,  is  that  any  reason  why  the 
purer  truth  should  shrink  from  universali¬ 
zation?  Has  Judaism  less  future  than 
Buddhism — that  religion  of  negation  and 
monkery — whose  sacred  classics  enjoin 
the  Bhiksu  to  camp  in  and  contemplate  a 
cemetery?  Has  it  less  inspiration  and 
optimism  than  that  apocalyptic  vision  of 
the  ultimate  victory  of  Good  which  con¬ 
soles  the  disciples  of  Zoroaster?  If  there 
is  anything  now  discredited  in  its  ancient 
Scriptures,  the  Synagogue  can,  as  of  yore, 
relegate  it  to  the  Apocrypha,  even  as  it 
can  enrich  the  canon  with  later  expres¬ 
sions  of  the  Hebrew  genius.  Its  one 
possible  rival,  Islam,  is,  as  Kuenen  main¬ 
tains,  as  sterile  for  the  future  as  Bud¬ 
dhism,  too  irretrievably  narrowed  to  the 
Arab  mentality.  But  why,  despite  his 


106  Chosen  Peoples 

magnificent  tribute  to  Judaism,  does  this 
unfettered  thinker  imagine  that  the  last 
word  is  with  Christianity?  Eucken,  too, 
would  call  the  future  Christian,  though  he 
rejects  the  Incarnation  and  regards  the 
Atonement  as  injurious  to  religion,  and 
the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  as  a  stumbling- 
block  rather  than  a  help.  Abraham  Lin¬ 
coln  being  only  a  plain  man,  was  not  able 
to  juggle  with  himself  like  a  German  theo¬ 
logian,  and  with  the  simplicity  of  great¬ 
ness  he  confessed:  “I  have  never  united 
myself  to  any  Church,  because  I  have 
found  difficulty  in  giving  my  assent,  with¬ 
out  mental  reservation,  to  the  long,  com¬ 
plicated  statements  of  the  Christian  doc¬ 
trine  which  characterize  their  Articles  of 
Belief  and  Confessions  of  Faith.”  “When 
any  church,”  he  added,  “will  inscribe  over 


Chosen  Peoples  107 

its  altar,  as  its  sole  qualification  for  mem¬ 
bership,  .  .  .  ‘Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord 
thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all 
thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  might,  and  thy 
neighbour  as  thyself/  that  church  will  I 
join  with  all  my  heart  and  with  all  my 
soul/’ 

Can  one  read  this  and  not  wonder  what 
Judaism  has  been  about  that  Lincoln  did 
not  even  know  there  was  such  a  church? 
But  call  the  coming  religious  reconstruc¬ 
tion  what  you  will,  what  do  names  matter 
when  all  humanity  is  crucified,  what  does 
anything  matter  but  to  save  it  from  mean¬ 
ingless  frictions  and  massacres?  “Would 
that  My  people  forgot  Me  and  kept  My 
commandments,”  says  the  Jerusalem  Tal¬ 
mud.  Too  long  has  Israel  been  silent. 
“Who  is  blind,”  says  the  prophet,  “but 


108  Chosen  Peoples 

My  servant,  or  deaf  as  My  messenger?” 
He  is  not  deaf  to-day,  he  is  only  dumb. 
But  the  voice  of  Jerusalem  must  be  heard 
again  when  the  new  world-order  is  shap¬ 
ing.  The  Chosen  People  must  choose. 
To  be  or  not  to  be.  “The  religion  of 
the  Jews  is  indeed  a  light,”  said  Coleridge 
in  his  “Table  Talk,”  “but  it  is  as  the  light 
of  the  glow-worm  which  gives  no  heat  and 
illumines  nothing  but  itself.”  Why  let 
a  sun  sink  into  a  glow-worm?  And  even 
a  glow-worm  should  turn.  It  does  not 
even  pay — that  prudent  maxim  of  the 
Babylonian  Talmud,  Dina  dimalchutha 
dina  (“In  Rome  do  as  the  Romans”). 
Despite  every  effort  of  Jews  as  individual 
citizens  the  world  still  tends  to  see  them 
as  Crabbe  saw  them  a  century  ago  in  his 
“Borough”: — 


Chosen  Peoples  109 

Nor  war  nor  wisdom  yields  our  Jews  delight, 
They  will  not  study  and  they  dare  not  fight. 

It  is  because  they  fight  under  no  banner 
of  their  own.  But  the  time  has  come 
when  they  must  fight  as  Jews — fight  that 
“mental  fight”  from  which  that  greater 
English  poet,  Blake,  declared  he  would 
not  cease  till  he  had  “built  Jerusalem  in 
England’s  green  and  pleasant  land.”  To 
build  Jerusalem  in  every  land — even  in 
Palestine — that  is  the  Jewish  mission. 
As  Nina  Salaman  sings — and  I  am  glad 
to  end  with  the  words  of  a  daughter  of  the 
lofty-souled  scholar  in  whose  honour  this 
lecture  is  given — 

Wherefore  else  our  age-long  life,  our  wandering 
landless, 

Every  land  our  home  for  ill  or  good? 

Ours  it  was  long  since  to  join  the  hands  of  na¬ 
tions 

Through  the  link  of  our  own  brotherhood. 


AFTERWORD 


AFTERWORD 


Dr.  Israel  Abrahams,  Reader  in  Tal¬ 
mudic  and  Rabbinic  Literature  in  the 
University  of  Cambridge,  in  seconding  the 
vote  of  thanks  to  the  speakers,  moved  by 
the  President  of  the  Jewish  Historical 
Society  (Sir  Lionel  Abrahams,  K.C.B.), 
said  that  the  Chairman  had  already  paid 
a  tribute  to  the  memory  of  Arthur  Davis. 
But  a  twice-told  tale  was  not  stale  in 
repetition  when  the  tale  was  told  of  such 
a  man.  He  was  a  real  scholar;  not  only 
in  the  general  sense  of  one  who  loved  great 
books,  but  also  in  the  special  sense  that  he 
possessed  the  technical  knowledge  of  an 
expert.  His  “Hebrew  Accents”  reveals 


113 


114  Chosen  Peoples 

Arthur  Davis  in  these  two  aspects.  It 
shows  mastery  of  an  intricate  subject,  a 
subject  not  likely  to  attract  the  mere 
dilettante.  But  it  also  reveals  his  interest 
in  the  Bible  as  literature.  He  appre¬ 
ciated  both  the  music  of  words  and  the 
melody  of  ideas.  When  the  work  ap¬ 
peared,  a  foreign  scholar  asked:  “Who 
was  his  teacher?’'  The  answer  was:  him¬ 
self.  There  is  a  rather  silly  proverb  that 
the  self-taught  man  has  a  fool  for  his 
master.  Certainly  Arthur  Davis  had  no 
fool  for  his  pupil.  And  though  he  had 
no  teacher,  he  had  what  is  better,  a  fine 
capacity  for  comradeship  in  studies. 
“Acquire  for  thyself  a  companion,”  said 
the  ancient  Rabbi.  There  is  no  friend¬ 
ship  equal  to  that  which  is  made  over  the 
common  study  of  books.  At  the  Talmud 


Chosen  Peoples  115 

meetings  held  at  the  house  of  Arthur 
Davis  were  founded  lifelong  intimacies. 
Unpretentious  in  their  aim,  there  was  in 
these  gatherings  a  harmony  of  charm  and 
earnestness;  pervading  them  was  the  true 
“joy  of  service.”  Above  all  he  loved  the 
liturgy.  Here  the  self-taught  man  must 
excel.  Homer  said: — 

Dear  to  gods  and  men  is  sacred  song. 
Self-taught  I  sing:  by  Heaven  and  Heaven 
alone 

The  genuine  seeds  of  poesy  are  sown. 

And,  as  the  expression  of  his  inmost  self, 
he  gave  us  the  best  edition  of  the  Festival 
Prayers  in  any  language:  better  than 
Sachs’ — than  which  praise  can  go  no 
higher.  This  Prayer  Book  is  his  true 
memorial,  unless  there  be  a  truer  still. 
Perhaps  his  feeling  that  he  might  after 


116  Chosen  Peoples 

all  have  lost  something  because  he  had  no 
teacher  made  him  so  wonderful  a  teacher 
of  his  own  daughters.  In  their  continu¬ 
ance  of  his  work  his  personality  endures. 
At  the  end  of  his  book  on  Accents  he 
quoted,  in  Hebrew,  a  sentence  from  Jere¬ 
miah,  with  a  clever  play  on  the  double 
meaning  of  the  word  which  signifies  at 
once  accent”  and  “taste.”  Thinking  of 
his  record,  and  how  his  beautiful  spirit 
animates  those  near  and  dear  to  him,  we 
may  indeed  apply  to  him  this  same  text: 
“His  taste  remaineth  in  him  and  his  fra¬ 
grance  is  not  changed.” 


THE  END 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OP  AMERICA 


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